Although he spent most of his career in Rome, Poussin was considered the greatest living French artist, and his work was avidly sought by influential French collectors. This sparkling study can be related to the Triumph of Pan (National Gallery, London), executed in 1636 for the French minister of state, Cardinal Richelieu, along with a pendant, the Triumph of Bacchus (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City).

While the finished painting depicts a scene of sensual abandon, the studies reveal Poussin's cerebral process of composition, in which individual figures were treated as formal elements of a tightly knit composition based on classical ideals of beauty. Here broad, abstracted areas of wash were used to explore the volume and spatial relations of the complex figural group, which appears, in reversed direction, at the left side of the painting. A nymph perched atop a goat twists to take a piece of fruit from a shallow basket balanced on the head of a kneeling satyr, while a second satyr wraps an arm around her from behind. At least four other studies for the painting survive—two at Windsor Castle, in England, and two at Bayonne, in France—suggesting the care with which Poussin prepared this important commission.